Your season is off and\u00a0running, you’ve prepared diligently\u00a0and completed your early-peak event and your next one is in the horizon. But, you find yourself with a significant gap between peak events and you aren’t sure how to spend that time.<\/p>\n
\nThis is a common situation facing athletes with a long season, and it’s a common topic\u00a0discussed between TrainerRoad athletes and our\u00a0coaching staff. So, here are a few suggestions to help you through this awkward time of your season.<\/p>\n
One\u00a0option is to try to maintain\u00a0your peak fitness by repeating the\u00a0taper weeks from your 8-week Specialty block<\/a>. This is especially useful for athletes who only have a short gap between important events, around\u00a01-3 weeks.<\/p>\n In this scenario, you’ve\u00a0completed all eight\u00a0weeks of your\u00a0Specialty block leading up to an important event, but another event or series of events is only a few weeks out. Here’s how to prepare in this sort of situation.\u00a0By repeating the seventh\u00a0or eighth\u00a0week of your current Specialty block for two or three weeks, your body should be able to maintain fitness by keeping the volume relatively low while still maintaining the same intensity.<\/p>\n You can choose to repeat the seventh week instead of repeating the eighth week if your body can handle the extra stress; however, if you’re just looking to stay sharp, repeating the eighth week will do the trick without placing too much stress on your body.<\/p>\n Example: <\/strong>A\u00a0rider looking to hold his\u00a0peak fitness for three\u00a0weeks between the end of his\u00a0Specialty block<\/a> and his\u00a0next\u00a0important event might repeat Week 7\u00a0twice\u00a0before moving on to Week 8\u00a0for the remaining weeks until his event.<\/p>\n You’ll see all of this in action next season when we introduce new Race Plans designed for situations just like this.<\/p>\n At times, you may find yourself with a little too much time to just<\/em> maintain your fitness, but not quite enough to complete another Build block<\/a>\u00a0on top of a full\u00a0Specialty block<\/a>. Here’s what we recommend.<\/p>\n If\u00a0your training gap is between four and seven weeks, try repeating a portion of the appropriate Specialty block<\/a>. Start with a recovery week, then follow the latter portion of your Specialty Block so the final week of your\u00a0plan coincides with your next peak. Warning<\/em>: some creativity may be required here.<\/p>\n Example 1: <\/strong>A cross-country racer who has four\u00a0weeks until her\u00a0next event could take an easy week and then repeat Week 5-7\u00a0of the Cross-Country Olympic block<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 thereby reducing the taper to a single week. Or, she could repeat\u00a0Week 6-8\u00a0of the\u00a0Cross-Country Olympic block<\/a>\u00a0if she has room for a longer taper.<\/p>\n Example 2 (a trickier situation):\u00a0<\/strong>A sprint triathlete with seven\u00a0weeks before his next race can\u00a0perform a recovery week and then dive into Week 2-8\u00a0of the Sprint Distance Triathlon<\/a>\u00a0block, skipping the seventh week and tapering with the eighth week instead.<\/p>\n For riders who don’t need as\u00a0severe of a reduction in intensity and for those with substantial room for improvement, a 5-week “ReBuild” is a good, short-term training solution to fill the\u00a0void between Specialty blocks<\/a>.<\/p>\n A good example of this is a rider with a long gap of roughly 8-12 weeks between events. In this case, the rider\u00a0would rebuild for five weeks then jump into the appropriate Specialty block \u2014 either eight weeks or four weeks \u2014\u00a0and absorb those\u00a04-6 weeks\u00a0without compromising any fitness, and, potentially expanding their\u00a0muscle endurance even further.<\/p>\n Until formal ReBuild blocks\u00a0are available next season, all you have to do is\u00a0give yourself a\u00a0very\u00a0easy week then repeat half of the appropriate Build<\/a> block. Complete the first half if you need an easy break, and complete the latter half if you can handle a higher\u00a0workload leading into your next Specialty<\/a> block.<\/p>\n Example: <\/strong>One easy week (all rides <65% FTP) followed by the latter four weeks of Sustained Power Build<\/a>,\u00a0followed by a\u00a0Climbing Road Race<\/a> block.<\/p>\n This allows a recovery week where nothing is too\u00a0stressful\u00a0followed by three weeks of increasing\u00a0stress. Follow this with that Build’s\u00a0recovery week to leave you poised to jump into your 8-week Specialty block and ready to go.<\/p>\n If you find yourself in this situation, it’s rarely a bad idea to take it a little easier and steer away from the high-intensity interval training you find in the\u00a0Build<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Specialty<\/a> phases. One way to recharge is by adding some biding time between training blocks by adding an Endurance block consisting of a lower intensity. Doing so is not only beneficial for your body but also your mental fitness \u2014 allowing you to take a much-needed mental and physical refresher.<\/p>\n Doing so is actually pretty simple. You can maintain your training schedule and your volume so that you’re riding just as frequently and just as long, just with a lower intensity.\u00a0The key difference in doing so is that your intensity drops into the Endurance\/Tempo zone \u2014 anywhere from 60-90% FTP.<\/p>\n During this Endurance phase, keep in mind that you’ll be increasing the volume of your training, so keep track of your weekly TSS to make sure it isn’t increasing. If you find your weekly TSS going up, simply decrease the intensity of your rides.<\/p>\n For instance, if your last Build block elevated your training load\u00a0to 450 TSS over the course of eight\u00a0weeks, it’s not a great idea to jump into a Post-Specialty endurance block with a TSS much higher than that. However,\u00a0this depends on your training history and\u00a0fitness as well<\/em> as the duration of your Endurance block. A one-week Endurance block might allow greater than 450 TSS, while a four-week endurance block should keep things well under\u00a0450 TSS.<\/p>\n Your best bets here are the Traditional Base I, II & III<\/a> blocks depending on which one offers the time:intensity<\/em> ratio that best suits your needs.<\/p>\n Example: <\/strong>A rider who has\u00a010 hours\/week for two\u00a0weeks to dedicate to a weekly stress\u00a0goal of roughly 500 TSS. The Traditional Base – High Volume II<\/a> block \u2014 weeks one and two \u2014 could be inserted before starting\u00a0eight weeks of the\u00a0Half-Distance Triathlon block<\/a>.<\/p>\n Until the new Race and\u00a0ReBuild blocks are ready to go come next season, these options will fill any\u00a0voids you find yourself in between key events \u2014 all while\u00a0keeping you sharp,\u00a0motivated and ready to perform\u00a0at your highest fitness levels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Your season is off and\u00a0running, you’ve prepared diligently\u00a0and completed your early-peak event and your next one is in the horizon. But, you find yourself with a significant gap between peak events and you aren’t sure how to spend that time. This is a common situation facing athletes with a long season, and it’s a common…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":9581,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,88,480,535,543,654],"class_list":["post-9321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-training","tag-build","tag-burnout","tag-peak","tag-rebuild","tag-rest","tag-taper"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trainerroad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trainerroad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trainerroad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trainerroad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trainerroad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.trainerroad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trainerroad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trainerroad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trainerroad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trainerroad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Partial-Specialty Block Repeat: 4-7\u00a0Weeks Between\u00a0Peaks<\/h3>\n
ReBuild:\u00a08-12 Weeks Between\u00a0Peaks<\/h3>\n
Just Feeling Burnt: 2-4 Week\u00a0Base-Training Recharge<\/h3>\n